Looking Back: Consentmo's Year in Review for 2023
What a ride 2023 has been for us here at Consentmo! It’s like we blinked and here we are, ready to dive into a recap of all the adventures and milestones we’ve hit this year. Let’s rewind and take a stroll down memory lane, looking at all the cool stuff we’ve accomplished together. Buckle up, because it's been quite the journey and we can’t wait to share it with you! 🚀🎉
🌐 Consentmo app accessibility improvement
Back in January, we introduced an accessibility updates that transformed the user experience, enhancing keyboard navigation, Compliance page accessibility, and even providing screen reader updates:
- Keyboard Navigation - We made it super easy to navigate the Cookie bar and Preference popup using just your keyboard. Whether you're using the Default, Classic, or Modern layout, the switches, buttons, and text are now sequentially selected, making it a breeze to submit consent preferences
How the different sections can be selected by the 'Tab' button:
- Compliance Page Accessibility - Good news! The Compliance pages are now fully accessible too! Just like the new layouts, navigating Compliance pages is clear and user-friendly.
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- Screen Reader Upgrade - Now, if you've translated the Cookie bar text and buttons into multiple languages, the screen reader will read them in the selected language! Links are also audible, with the screen reader letting you know that a new tab will open upon interaction. It's all about making your experience better!
⚖️ The CPRA in the Consentmo app
As of January 1, 2023, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) came into play, adding more muscle to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) from 2018. With the CPRA, California consumers gained enhanced rights, such as the ability to opt-out of personal information sales and request the deletion of their personal data. It's all about giving individuals more control over their information.
Consentmo app equips Shopify stores with the necessary tools to establish CCPA compliance. It generates a dedicated CCPA Compliance page that details the types and usage of collected personal information, along with the rights accorded to California residents under the CCPA. The "Do Not Sell Rule" is seamlessly integrated into the CCPA Compliance page.
Now, configuring the app aligns seamlessly with specific CPRA rules. This encompasses the existing request featured on the CCPA compliance page and the option to include additional notices on the Preferences popup, as demonstrated:
🔄 New Quick Setup updates
This year we've rolled out a new awesome feature that makes it possible for customers to choose multiple compliance regions at once from the start in the Quick Setup. In 3 easy steps, you could configure the app and get your Cookie bar and Preferences popup ready to roll on your store. Now, merchants could select any combination of GDPR, LGPD, APPI, PIPEDA and US regions (CCPA-CPRA, VCDPA, CPA and CTDPA), and the app guided them through the necessary steps to ensure compliance with each selected region's privacy law. This update was all about making it easier for businesses to get compliant with multiple privacy laws.
Alongside the recent Region Settings selection update, users who opted for a paid plan gained access to the "Enable Globally" button. This handy feature showcased the Cookie bar and Preferences popup to audiences worldwide.
Now you can select any combination of regions or just select the 'Enable Globally' option if you are on a premium plan:
🖌️ Redesigned Translation tab
Consentmo app introduced a user-friendly redesign of the Translation tab, categorizing features for more intuitive navigation.
- Free Automatic Translation: Automatic translation of the Cookie Bar and Data Collection text became free for all users, supporting 27 languages for enhanced accessibility.
- Visual Previews: A new Cookie Bar and Preferences popup preview feature allowed users to visualize their website's appearance with different languages, ensuring a user-friendly experience.
- Comprehensive Manual Translation Guidance: For users preferring manual translation, we added a Manual Translation section with step-by-step tutorials, making the process efficient and accurate.
- Enhanced Third-Party App Integration: The app seamlessly integrated with various third-party translation apps, providing users with flexibility and additional options for language translation needs.
The new outlook of the Translation tab in the Consentmo app:
⚙️ Revamped Quick Setup UI with a Summary Page and New Layout for enhanced user experience
- Streamlined Quick Setup: Recognizing the value of your time, we prioritized simplifying the setup process for our GDPR/CCPA app, focusing on making it quick and easy for e-commerce store owners.
- Revised Quick Setup Layout: In response to user feedback, we transformed the Quick Setup from a single-page format to individual pages for each step, providing a cleaner and more intuitive experience.
- Enhanced User-Friendly Configuration: The revised setup now offers a step-by-step guide, including choosing a plan, selecting regions for the Cookie bar, and configuring design preferences, ensuring a smoother and more manageable process.
- Interactive Summary Page: A new summary page at the end of the setup allows users to review and edit their chosen settings, promoting clarity, transparency, and easy adjustments.
- Effortless Compliance: These updates reduce the time and effort required for setup, ensuring that e-commerce store owners can achieve and maintain compliance without sacrificing valuable time.
The new Summery page in the Quick Setup of the Consentmo app:
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All the details for the improvements mentioned above you can find in the dedicated blog post
👧👦 Comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)
COPPA plays a crucial role in safeguarding children's online privacy, recognizing their vulnerability to privacy violations due to a potential lack of understanding about sharing personal information. The law mandates that website operators and online service providers secure parental consent before collecting personal data from children under 13. This ensures parents are informed about how their child's information is utilized. For a comprehensive COPPA compliance checklist, you can refer to the full list available here.
🍪 New Cookie Bar Widget, an exciting addition to the Consentmo app
The feature is Available for Plus and Enterprise users, and allows customers to interact with the Cookie Bar and Preferences popup continually. It remains accessible on the storefront, providing a convenient way for users to adjust their cookie preferences. Users can customize the widget's appearance, choosing between a text bubble or icon display. This powerful feature enhances storefronts, ensuring a persistent Cookie bar presence for Plus and Enterprise users. You can find detailed information about this awesome new feature in the blog post here.
The Cookie Bar Widget on the storefront:
💼 Changes in the Consentmo app plans
We have always wanted to deliver effective solutions that empowered organizations to uphold data privacy and foster trust with their users through the Consentmo app. In line with that mission, we revamped our plans with updated prices. In this blog post you can find all the changes and features included in the Free, Standard, Plus and Enterprise plans.
The new outlook of the Consentmo plans:
🤝 Hydrogen and Consentmo's Integration for Shopify
We've partnered up with Hydrogen for an update that streamlines your experience. If you're on the Enterprise plan, you now get extra code for your Hydrogen project in 'Other settings' > 'Integrations' > 'Hydrogen (Headless)'. This lets you personalize your store even more, ensuring a unique brand reflection. With simple integration steps, you're boosting data protection, meeting compliance, and enhancing the customer journey. Check the Hydrogen (Headless) section in Consentmo.
The Hydrogen (Headless) section in the Consentmo app:
🔤 New Google Translate feature
During the summer a new Google translate feature came to the stage. If you use Plus or Enterprise plans, you can seamlessly add a global touch to your Cookie Bar & Preferences pop-up. Choosing a language is now super easy, thanks to our user-friendly setup. We also supercharged the Set Language feature, streamlining tasks by translating the Data Collection text all at once. These updates aimed to make your Consentmo experience even more delightful. You can dive in and play with the translation options here.
How the 'Translate content with Google Translate' works in the Consentmo app:
🖇️ Google Consent Mode integration
Google Consent Mode seamlessly integrated into the Consentmo app, allowing users to adjust Google tags based on consent status. Detailed integration steps were available in our two dedicated blog posts: How to integrate the Google Consent Mode into Consentmo app and Integrating the Google Consent Mode into the Consentmo app. The process involved commenting out the Google Tag Manager script from the theme.liquid file and copying the Google Consent Mode code.
After integration, users tested by checking if Google Tag Manager's tags fired before Cookie Bar acceptance. They verified ad_storage and analytics_storage settings in the dataLayer and ensured cookies like _ga, _gid, and _gat were not set before accepting the Cookie Bar. Following these steps ensured a successful Google Consent Mode setup.
📈Adding More Details with Cookie Provider and Duration
We believe in transparency and we know you do too. That's why we've now added the option to specify the cookie provider and the duration for each cookie. The provider is who's setting the cookie, and the duration lets your customers know how long the cookie will be active. This way, your customers are not only informed about what cookies are being used but also who sets them and for how long. The full blog post can be found here.
How the Provider and Duration can be added in the Cookie Information Panel:
🗽 New US Compliance Laws in the app
In the dynamic realm of U.S. data privacy, Colorado's CPA and Connecticut's CTDPA joined the ranks alongside Virginia's VCDPA and California's CCPA/CPRA. Consentmo stayed ahead of the curve, keeping you effortlessly compliant. For newcomers, a revamped onboarding process simplified selecting CPA and CTDPA during app installation. For the old users could easily enable these states in the General tab.
The US Laws Compliance page underwent a transformation, consolidating all laws into a single, comprehensive resource for Premium users. The addition of the Data Portability request feature and a new US Laws category in the Consent Log tab further enhanced transparency and ease of use. The Consentmo website also underwent streamlining, offering a dedicated page for all U.S. Compliance matters. These updates aimed to empower users in the ever-changing landscape of data privacy laws.
The new US laws in the Consentmo app:
🔍 Consentmo's Cookie Scanner
We introduced a fresh update to our Cookie Scanner, here is what you will find:
- A New Home For The Scanner: We created a dedicated "Cookie Scanner" category in the Cookie Bar tab, providing better organization. Plus, a shortcut link on the Dashboard made it easy to access the Cookie Scanner with just one click!
- On-Demand Scanner: For premium users, the on-demand feature remained handy. Additionally, Plus and Enterprise users enjoyed the 'Auto-transfer scanned cookies' feature, automatically adding new cookies to the Cookie Information Table.
- Arrange with AI' Feature: Encountering unknown cookies? Our 'Arrange with AI' feature stepped in, guiding users through classification. An email summary of known and unknown cookies, arranged by our AI, landed in their inbox.
- Scheduled Scanner: Exclusive for Enterprise users, they could now schedule cookie scans daily, weekly, or monthly at their preferred time. Unknown cookies were automatically sorted, and after each scan, a detailed report with all cookie details was sent their way.
Where you can find the new Cookie scanner and it's features:
🔄️ Streamlined Cookie Management with bulk Import and Export
A new feature tailored for our Plus and Enterprise users. The Import and Export Cookies via CSV, conveniently located in the Cookie Bar tab under Cookie Management. Here's a quick breakdown:
- Import Cookies with Ease: Bulk Uploading: Easily add multiple cookies using a CSV file to populate various categories.Overwrite Safeguard: Be mindful, importing existing cookies will overwrite the current data.
- Downloadable Example File: Not sure about formatting? Download our CSV template for accurate entries
- Export Cookies with a Click: Effortlessly export all cookies across categories in a handy CSV file.
The 'Import and Export cookies' feature in the Consentmo app:
For more detailed information and a step-by-step guide, check out our dedicated blog post.
🌍 Expanding Linguistic Options
We added 14 new languages to our GDPR Compliance page translation. While we previously supported major languages like English, French, German, and Spanish, we expanded our repertoire to include Danish, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Irish, Maltese, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Turkish. This meant that our GDPR Compliance page could be automatically translated into every language available for the Cookie bar and Preference popup.
The GDPR Complance language change in the Consentmo app:
🗺️ Multilingual Admin feature
Navigating Consentmo’s admin in multiple languages is now a delight! From installation, choose your language—English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish—with the Quick Setup language widget.
Switching languages is a snap anytime, anywhere, thanks to the widget in the dashboard's top right corner.
Our commitment to a seamless user experience extends globally. We believe multilingual admin access empowers users to handle compliance effortlessly, fostering trust and clarity in business operations.
This enhancement reflects our ongoing dedication to user-friendly accessibility. Trust-building compliance, now in your native language, is part of our mission to refine services for diverse user needs.
The Quick Setup showing the language widget in the Consentmo app:
📄 Enhancing Compliance pages with a Professional touch
In our quest for a better user experience, Consentmo has upgraded compliance pages for free users. Previously featuring an empty space, these pages now showcase the Consentmo logo in the top left corner, adding a professional touch aligned with our values of security and trustworthiness.
For those seeking enhanced branding, premium plans allow personalization with the addition of a logo and shop's name, offering complete control over brand representation. Premium users also enjoy a choice of color schemes for a consistent brand look. More details about this update can be found in our this blog post. This update reflects our commitment to making compliance not only robust but visually appealing, ensuring a polished presentation for all users.
How the Compliance request pages can look for the Premium users:
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💎The Built for Shopify badge
Last but not least, this year was a game-changer for us - Consentmo is now a proud owner of the 'Built for Shopify' badge. We were the first compliance app to score this shiny award! But what's all the fuss about this 'Built for Shopify' thing? Well, it's kind of a big deal. Shopify dishes out this badge to apps that stick to their strict standards, ensuring you get a super-smooth, top-notch experience.
Our team at Consentmo rolled up their sleeves and got down to business to hit these high standards!
The Build for Shopify badge in the Consentmo app listing page:
🆕 Rebranding into Consentmo
As a bonus update, we cannot miss mentioning the biggest thing of 2023 – rebranding our app into Consentmo and launching our new website. It was all about making sure you get top-notch compliance solutions with an awesome user experience. We're not stopping there! We've got some big plans for the future. We're not just about compliance, we're aiming to be one of the coolest compliance apps in the Shopify world. So, get ready because we're on a mission to keep rocking your compliance world and grow into something amazing!
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